The Gunpowder Plot

by Antonia Fraser

  A good time was had within the Tower by the Royal Family in the days leading up to the solemn procession. There was a striking contrast between the dignified royal apartments and the dungeons for state prisoners – not far away – that the ancient edifice also housed. As John Taylor, the Water-Poet, put it:

  For though the Tower be a castle royal,

  Yet there’s a prison in it for men disloyal.1

  During this time the ten-year-old Prince Henry was more interested in the spectacle of the zoo, also within the Tower’s confines. He watched a lion being baited by three dogs: two of them died, but, when one looked likely to recover, Prince Henry ordered the dog to be cosseted and spared further ordeals: ‘He that hath fought with the King of Beasts shall never fight inferior.’2

  It was all part of the Prince’s high profile as the King’s heir. His appearance in the royal procession on its way to Whitehall was the first opportunity that the public – as opposed to the court – had had of inspecting the boy they took to be their future sovereign. King James rode a white jennet (possibly one of the Spanish horses presented by Tassis the previous October) under a canopy carried by Gentlemen of the Privy Chamber. His duties included listening to two speeches by Ben Jonson and several by the playwright Thomas Dekker, delivered under seven wooden arches specially erected for the occasion and intricately carved. King James was said to have borne ‘the day’s brunt with patience’, although crowds, even when not plague-ridden, always made him uncomfortable and aroused his latent fears about his own security. Anne of Denmark on the other hand charmed everyone with that wave-from-the-elbow so characteristic of royalty down the ages. In return she was greeted outside St Paul’s Cathedral by musicians from her native country to make her feel at home. But it was the tall, good-looking boy, Prince Henry, bowing this way and that to acknowledge the cheers, who provided the novel focus of attention.3

  Spectators could not fail to be impressed that an Opening of Parliament was now a family occasion and an opportunity to express loyalty to the composite image in public. ‘Men disloyal’, in Taylor’s phrase, might of course see such a state occasion as a perfect opportunity to wipe out the major royal players at one fell swoop.

  Prince Henry had also accompanied his father to an ecclesiastical conference held earlier in January at Hampton Court. King James, wrapped in furs against the cold, presided over a series of theological discussions which were intended to sort out the Puritan element in the Protestant Church, with its tiresomely obstreperous attitude to royal authority. Afterwards some Catholics – notably Father Tesimond – believed that ‘all our miseries’ had begun at that point, with the King pronouncing ‘emphatically and virulently’ against the Catholic Church, in order to balance his hostility to the Puritans. Yet not all the King’s pronouncements at that time were anti-Catholic. Once again he invoked the hallowed name of Mary Queen of Scots when he complained how the equivalent of the Puritans in Scotland had misused ‘that poor lady my mother’, and had then ill-treated him during his minority. Now the Puritans were once more making trouble about the episcopacy: what institution would be next – the monarchy? ‘It is my aphorism ‘‘No bishop, no King’’,’ he commented drily.4

  On 19 February, however, King James did publicly announce ‘his utter detestation’ of the Papist religion which he condemned as ‘superstitious’. Three days later a proclamation ordered all Jesuits and priests out of the realm, while the fines for recusancy were once more imposed. On 19 March the King’s speech in Parliament effectively crushed those Catholic hopes for liberty of conscience which had sprung up in the warm climate of his Scottish promises.5 The pro-Papist and pro-Spanish courtiers were still in place, indicating that the King’s amiable personal tolerance had not changed. The pro-Spanish Queen still wrote lovingly to the Pope and heard Mass in private. But the negotiations for the Anglo-Spanish Treaty were winding on without reference to the subject of Catholic toleration, since Philip III had officially abandoned his interest in the subject.

  Instead, the Constable of Castile, with his powers to clinch the deal, was in Flanders en route for England. He would shortly be negotiating with the jewellers of Antwerp for suitable presents for King James. A careful man (or a pessimist), he hoped to acquire them sale or return, in case the treaty fell through at the last moment. But that did not now seem a likely prospect. The King would get his jewels. In any case, secure on his throne, James wanted nothing more from his Papists. The days of bargaining were over.

  There was a further blow for the Catholics. The King devoted his real energies in this session of Parliament to establishing an Anglo-Scottish Union rather than Catholic toleration. Anglo-Scottish Union was an unpopular cause with most Members of Parliament, as the debates showed. But it was where the King’s heart lay.

  The King’s speech in Parliament placed heavy emphasis on the blessings of peace which, as he firmly if not modestly expressed it, ‘God hath in my Person bestowed upon you all.’ First, there was peace abroad with all foreign neighbours; thanks to James, ‘and only by mine arrival here’, the country was now ‘free of a great and tedious war’. The second, internal peace was to be achieved by a proper Anglo-Scottish Union, not simply the joining of the two countries under one crown.

  Here James waxed eloquent, as he propounded the utter rightness of this union in a series of fanciful images, in which the King was the ‘Husband’ and the whole island was his wife, the King was the ‘Head’ and the island his body, the King was the ‘Shepherd’ and the island his flock. Was a Christian king to find himself a polygamist with two wives? Was the head to preside over ‘a divided and monstrous body’? Was ‘so fair a Flock (whose fold hath no wall to hedge it but the four Seas)’ to remain parted in two?

  Unfortunately the subsequent debate would show that none of these elaborately intellectual concepts had proved especially convincing to the King’s English subjects. There was, instead, a remarkable display of gut feelings of dislike for the Scots: that is, the Scots in England, ‘an Effluxion of People from the Northern parts’. The flock was indeed a fair one, but it was an English one, and the English sheep had no intention of sharing their richer pastures with their northern neighbours – not if they could help it. So the Members of Parliament contributed their own hostile comparisons. There was talk of plants which are transplanted from barren ground (Scotland) into a more fertile one (England) and how they always ‘grow and overgrow’. Analogies were made to the cunning widow of a London merchant who sells all her own goods at a profit in order to ‘live upon the Husband’s stock’.6

  A suggestion that the entire island should be known by the name of Britain – ‘which is most honourable’ – met with a disgusted response. This was a particular hobby-horse of King James: years later, a hostile pamphlet would refer to Britain as ‘your word’. King James was the first English monarch to have himself depicted in Roman Imperial style on an accession medal which showed him as Emperor of the Whole Island of Britain, and he loved the legendary family tree which had him descended from one Brute, ‘the most noble founder of the Britains’. The ancient (if bogus) pedigree seemed to him to supply a historical basis for the union he craved.* In 1604, however, Parliament was distinctly unimpressed by the claims of Brute’s descendant to change the name of their country, much preferring the glorious and famous name of ‘our mother England’.7

  On 21 April Sir Francis Bacon read a statement on the King’s behalf in which he complained of all this ‘carping’. Some of the hares started were indeed thoroughly captious. For example there was a notion that if the King died without issue the English crown would be alienated by passing to his heir on his father’s side, a Scot without any English Tudor blood.8 In reality, James’ next heir after his three children was clearly his father’s brother’s daughter, Lady Arbella Stuart, who lived in England and enjoyed exactly the same share of Tudor blood as the King himself. Nevertheless there was an unmistakeable message here for the King, whether he cared to accept it or not: the Scots who ha
d come to England in his train and been promoted lavishly by him were extremely unpopular.

  This kind of ugly resentment of the outsiders given advancement was expressed not only in Parliament but outside it – travelling as far as Flanders where both Hugh Owen and Guido Fawkes gave vent to anti-Scottish outbursts. Of the Jacobean Scots at court, the ‘new elite’, the unpopular royal favourite Sir George Home, who came south with his master, was made Keeper of the Wardrobe for life on 1 June 1603.9 He certainly did not help his cause in English eyes by selling off the richly embellished garments of the old Queen which were in his custody and thus making a killing for himself. But Sir George prospered: he was made a Privy Councillor, as were other Scots, and created Lord Home of Berwick. When it came to the more intimate role of Gentleman of the Bedchamber (which was a coveted court appointment) the King also promoted the Scots. It was not unnatural, perhaps, but it scarcely pointed to the impartiality of a true ‘Briton’.

  The next year, Ben Jonson aroused the royal anger in his satire Eastward Ho!, which mocked the King’s Scottish courtiers. Parodying the popular play Westward Ho! by Webster and Dekker, Jonson included in his dramatis personae Sir Petronel Flash, ‘a new-made knight’, referring to those numerous Scottish adventurers who had taken the road south with the King and been rewarded. The gibe which stung concerned the Scots’ population of the new colony of Virginia: ‘I would a hundred thousand of them were there,’ ran the offending lines, ‘for we are all one countrymen now, ye know; and we should find ten times more comfort of them there than we do here.’ Jonson did a spell in prison which incidentally seemed to bother him less than the embarrassing nature of his offence. ‘The cause (would I could name some worthier) is, a (the word irks me)… a play, my lord,’ he confessed to Cecil, pleading for release.10 Jonson was duly let go and the gibe was removed from subsequent performances.

  The Scots were also derided for their accent, which was considered uncouth, despite its being the accent of both King James and Queen Anne. The Scots were generally considered to be lacking in hygiene: the crude word ‘stinking’ so rudely applied by Hugh Owen to the sovereign was also regularly directed at his northern subjects. Young Lady Anne Clifford, the privileged English heiress, shuddered at finding herself ‘all lousy’ through sitting in the chamber of Sir Thomas Erskine, another Scottish favourite, recently created Captain of the Yeomen of the Guard.11

  If the newly rich Scots were said to be greedy (as well as unwashed), then the attitude to the Scottish lower classes was scarcely likely to be more enlightened. The poor Scots established a colony in Holborn known as ‘little Scotland’, but the prospect of immigrants huddling together did not please either, in spite of the ‘Scots Kist’ (Scottish Box) placed at a house in Lamb’s Conduit, a large brass-bound chest to which more prosperous Scottish nationals contributed. The beggars with their hateful accent were the most resented of all (as Irish beggars would come to be resented later in the seventeenth century). There were gangs called Swaggerers whose speciality was to prey upon the vulnerable homeless Scots in London.12 King James had them arrested, but unfortunately he could not have all the Swaggerers in Parliament similarly treated.

  The King’s precious scheme of a Union languished, and it would not be effected for over a hundred years. In 1604 the spectacle of Scottish advancement was another aggravation to those already discontented with their lot. The recusants in particular would come to have an honest grievance. The money to reward this covetous crew had to come from somewhere. One simple method of acquisition was to allow the religious fines – the ‘benefits of recusancy’ – to be collected by the King’s Scottish protégés at court.

  In his speech of 19 March, King James was on much surer ground – at least where his Protestant audience was concerned – when he came to the topic of the third treasured peace which he intended to secure for the realm. This was the peace of God which could be secured only ‘by profession of the true religion’. In one sense the Venetian Ambassador was right to report that the King’s remarks which followed were quite conciliatory.13 His language was not the language of detestation and persecution. He even spoke wistfully about a general Christian Union (like many would-be negotiators, the King was a great believer in unions as inevitably working towards peace). As so often before, he underlined his instinctive revulsion from persecution for religious reasons: ‘I would be sorry to punish their bodies for the error of their minds.’ But in another sense the speech – by totally discarding those promises he was supposed to have made – could only cause the most frightful dismay among his Catholic subjects.

  It was all very well to be told that the King would be a friend to them so long as they conducted themselves as good subjects. But what were they to make of the stern sentiments which followed? The Papists were admonished not to presume too much upon the King’s leniency. They should not think it lawful for them ‘daily to increase their number and strength in this Kingdom’, whereby, if not in his time, at least in the time of his successors, ‘they might be in hope to erect their Religion again’. The King was emphatic on this point: there was to be absolutely no increase or ‘growing’ of their religion, otherwise he would consider that he had betrayed himself and his own conscience. Then the King in his speech addressed the Protestant bishops and urged them henceforward to be more ‘careful, vigilant, and diligent than you have been to win souls to God… where you have been in any way sluggish before, now waken yourselves up again with a new diligence in this point…’

  It was the firm opinion of Father Gerard in his Narrative that this directive by the King was responsible for the renewed persecution of the Catholics which followed. The Puritans were bound to bay for Catholic blood, or at any rate for Catholic penalties. Nevertheless the King could easily have stayed their fury by saying that he would consider the matter, instead of confirming the most rigorous laws and statutes of the previous reign. In short, ‘all hopes were foiled on which Catholics did build their comforts’. Father Tesimond took the same line. He also drew attention to the King’s brutal denial of those very promises on which the Catholics had built their expectations. In Tesimond’s words, the King ‘protested most vehemently that he would take it as an extreme insult if anyone imagined that either then or at any time in the past, he had entertained the slightest intention of tolerating their religion’.14

  In 1591 John Florio had written a poem on the ‘Ten Pains of Death’. These included ‘To serve well and not to please’ and ‘To stand at the door that none will open’.15 These two pains the Catholics could now claim that they were suffering, the last one especially agonising since it had been believed now for several years that the door of toleration was actually going to open.

  Both Father Tesimond and Father Gerard, in their accounts, used equestrian metaphors, perhaps elicited by the royal mania for hunting, to illustrate the effects of the King’s change of heart. Father Tesimond saw the (Protestant) horse of St George as being quickened in its intolerant pace by the King’s pressure: ‘These words dug spurs into the steed he was coursing and gave unbounded delight to Bishops and Puritans alike,’ he wrote. Father Gerard, on the other hand, saw the pricks as being administered to the Catholics themselves. It was generally thought by wise men, he wrote, that these events and those of a repressive nature which followed were ‘the spurs’ that set the conspirators ‘upon that furious and fiery course which they afterwards fell into’.16

  Both priests could justify the sharp image. On 27 March, a week after the King’s speech, Lord Sheffield told Cecil with relish about 900 recusants, new names and old, who had been brought before the assizes at Normanby in Yorkshire. There would have been more but for the slackness of the Archbishop. Sheffield’s glee at being empowered to quell a growing menace is understandable from his own (strongly Protestant) point of view. The accounts of recusants in Yorkshire for this period do show that over a quarter of those accused had broken the law only since the accession of King James. On 24 April a bill was introduced into the Hou
se of Commons to class all Catholics as outlaws. It was also ‘about this time’ – late April – that according to Lord Chief Justice Popham the Gunpowder Plot was ‘set on foot as the only means to relieve that [Catholic] party’.17 Both sides had indeed been spurred forward.

  The prince of darkness at the centre of the Gunpowder Plot was Robert Catesby, not Guy Fawkes. A historical accident of discovery led, as we shall see, to Guido carrying the popular odium for the conspiracy down the ages. But Guido, although heavily involved in the action, was not at the heart of the strategy. He was the outsider in the band. With the single exception of Fawkes, the plotters formed a tight-knit circle of interlocking relationships which was a vital protective element in their dangerous and secret game. And it was Catesby who was ‘the first inventor and the chiefest furtherer’ of that game.18

  Catesby as a harbinger (if not a prince) of darkness would be the government’s own image in the future when he was termed ‘a second Phaeton’.19 Phaeton, son of Phoebus Apollo, was a mythical bringer of night, who by upsetting his chariot had threatened to parch and blacken the whole world until Zeus destroyed him with a thunderbolt. Shakespeare, in a play written towards the end of the previous reign, had Juliet call for Phaeton the ‘waggoner’ to whip up his fiery-footed steeds towards the west ‘And bring in cloudy night immediately’ – the night which would bring Romeo to her. But the Catesby of 1604 was to his contemporaries more Phoebus Apollo than Phaeton, more shining sun god than destructive charioteer.

  Among his family and friends, including Catholic priests and devout ladies, ‘Robin’ Catesby was adored. To Catesby’s contemporary Lord Monteagle (who was married to his first cousin, Elizabeth Tresham), he was ‘my loving kinsman… dear Robin’ whose person was ‘the only sun that must ripen our harvest’.20 Charm and a special kind of personal radiance are qualities notoriously hard to transmit across the ages, to societies with very different preoccupations and values. And yet such qualities in individuals may play just as important a part in defining the course of history as more visibly enduring talents.* Certainly, it is impossible to understand the course of the Powder Treason from now on unless one takes into account the magnetism of Robert Catesby.